


saw you in a dream

by synapses



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Agent!Reader, Angst, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff, cw: mentions of panic attacks/trauma, this is mostly just wish fulfillment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-07-10 23:58:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15960332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synapses/pseuds/synapses
Summary: You read fairy tales as a kid, and maybe internalized too many stories about chivalrous knights and courageous kings instead of clever youngest sons and humble woodcutters. So you have a thing for heroes, really, but only a certain kind—the ones with honor writ large across their nobly-set bones and fine, expressive eyes, single-minded commitment to what is just evident in the stern set of their mouths. You know it’s ridiculous: they are all hard edges, no soft curves, will not bend before they break. They will not love you (because they do not even see you). They are too busy looking for monsters to fight. And there are always monsters.A Steve/Reader fic, set post-"Avengers" and pre CA:TWS





	1. a fantasy and a nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> ok lol this is self indulgent steve/reader angst with eventual romance, please forgive me if any continuity is inaccurate bc i'm just bullshitting. this takes place during avengers / the time after avengers but before winter soldier, when steve is in DC working for SHIELD, hopefully that's not confusing

You read fairy tales as a kid, and maybe internalized too many stories about chivalrous knights and courageous kings instead of clever youngest sons and humble woodcutters. So you have a thing for men whose jaws, clenched, say do not touch, who are all steel and virtue and uncompromising asceticism. A thing for heroes, really, but only a certain kind—the ones with honor writ large across their nobly-set bones and fine, expressive eyes, single-minded commitment to what is just evident in the stern set of their mouths. You know it’s ridiculous: they are all hard edges, no soft curves, will not bend before they break. They will not love you (because they do not even _see_ you). They are too busy looking for monsters to fight. And there are always monsters.

The summer you turn thirteen you read _Romeo and Juliet_ , then fall for the boy down the street, who is tall and caramel-skinned and is heading to college as a pre-med in the fall. He uses a ladder to climb the lightning-struck oak in your backyard and rescue your family’s tabby cat, which looks smugly over at you from the cradle of his arms while he climbs back down.

Afterwards, he brushes off your thanks with a distant smile. Somehow, you know he’s already gone, daydreaming about the college whose baseball cap he wears, and in late August he stuffs boxes and suitcases and a mini-fridge into the back of an SUV. Your eyes water when you see him leave. (You see him again almost ten years later, a brief glance across a busy emergency room while getting a cut stitched, and your stomach flutters as if no time has passed.)

At fifteen you pine over the man who wanders into your parents’ store in the middle of corn-fed, small-town Kansas asking for directions. He’s not local, or he doesn’t look it, and is carrying a paper map and an ancient compass. Shyly, you ask him where he’s going.

“I’m a biologist,” he says—his smile makes warmth rise in your chest, flood your cheeks— “and I came to study the local wildlife, see what conservation efforts I can start here. But I really can’t interpret this map.” You mark down local landmarks as well as you can, wanting to impress him by being thorough. When you’re done, he thanks you courteously, giving you a lighthearted bow and heading out into the rain. You’re enchanted—for weeks afterwards you hold onto the embarrassing daydream of him in a black mask a la Westley from _The Princess Bride_ , sweeping you off of your feet and murmuring _as you wish_ in your ear.

When you head to college, you shed the naiveté you used to wear like an old blanket, although you keep a kernel of it tucked close to your heart, where you still believe in sly foxes and sleeping dragons. Where you still love, childishly, the noble heroes of your fairy tales, even though you're taking gender studies courses and know just how much they’re informed by patriarchal constructs. For the most part, you eschew college boys and their penchant for drunk one-night stands, but your “brief fling” with a politician’s son lasts for three years. (Until you're both two years out from Georgetown, and he’s working as his mother’s chief of staff, and he wants to meet your parents, and suddenly it all gets too _serious_ , so you take off, like a cornered nightingale flying from a tree.)

Six months later, you’ve moved to New York City to take a job in PR, with a shitty apartment in Hell’s Kitchen and a bartending gig on the side. It’s an escape from your heartbreak that you hadn’t anticipated. For a few hours every week, you can lose yourself in a bartender’s manufactured friendliness, which becomes just the kind of surprisingly anonymous job you crave. After a few weeks of mixing drinks and sliding them across the scarred wooden bar to your customers, you feel yourself starting to recapture your balance.

The bar is home, and so are its familiar faces: Jack and Connor, the owners, who are partners in more than one sense; Caroline, a grad student who comes in the evenings to type her manuscript and is starting to become a new friend; Greg, the bouncer; and Ethan, your fellow bartender, who slips you shots of chilled water to take with your customers (you pretend it’s Grey Goose, and you split the tips). You’re happy, maybe even thriving, and there’s so many things to do in the city, so you’re going to spin class and walking through Central Park and maybe even considering adopting a puppy.

Then the Chitauri invade New York, and everything goes to hell.

You’re getting coffee from a small deli near work and eyeing a guy ahead of you in line. He’s cute—tall, dark-haired, looks like some kind of artist (he holds a portfolio of his work under one arm). In particular, you notice his hands, how they’re strong and elegant and stained with graphite, and you’re focusing absentmindedly on how they grasp his espresso when the back wall of the deli blows out.

Your PR firm is blown to rubble and the Hulk crashes through the windows of the office building next door. The scarred wood of the counter in the bar that you love so much is smashed to pieces by a squadron of Chitauri soldiers hell bent on destruction, and the rest of the place doesn’t fare much better. It’s a small mercy, a _small fucking mercy_ that your tiny apartment, with the ceiling that leaks in the rain and the creaky bedframe and the barely functional thermostat, survives the attack.

Mostly, you think, you’re lucky to be alive, with only a few broken bones, some internal bleeding, and minor shrapnel wounds for your troubles. Nothing that a doctor couldn’t fix. After the attack, when you cry, you cry for the man with the elegant artist’s hands. He’ll never use them again, shredded to the bone as they were from the blast.

It’s after the Avengers save the city, ironically enough, when you stop hoping for a hero to sweep you off your feet. Now the heroes are real, and they’re as terrifying as the villains. (For weeks afterwards, the only thing the news will show is the footage of Thor’s lightning spiking brutally through the air, of the Hulk wrestling down a giant, armored Chitauri beast, of Tony Stark in his Iron Man suit, diverting airborne enemies into buildings.)

Collateral damage from the battle is endless, and even as you’re grossly, embarrassingly grateful for your own life, you begin to hate them for it. Tony foots the bill for the city’s repairs, of course, and the bar begins to spring up from the ruins, but when you’re sitting on the floor behind the counter unable to breathe from panic, you realize it won’t ever be your safe place again.

So you join up, contact a Georgetown alum who pulls some strings to get you accepted as a low-level field-agent-in-training in D.C. Working for S.H.I.E.L.D eases the nightmares a little: you’ve stopped sleepwalking to the door of your apartment in search of an escape, at least. Being back in D.C. is comforting in a way that New York isn’t, and training makes you strong, helps you start believing that maybe you can take on the bad guys yourself.

You’re a good agent, maybe even a great one, and the grief makes you want to push yourself hard, so you graduate training within a year, start handling small day-to-day operations. Occasionally you see a flash of red hair and black catsuit or the gleam of a vibranium shield and will yourself to retreat from the panic; you knew Rogers and Romanoff were going to be involved with S.H.I.E.L.D (although not as close as the same city, not as close as the same building, not _that_ close).

You wake in a cold sweat one day during the early dawn, feeling agitated and restless. In her last psych eval, Dr. Stanton recommended exercising as a way to calm your strained nerves, so you lace on your running shoes and start jogging, tracing a path along the Potomac and through the National Mall. Finally, you stop to stretch on the path beside a grassy knoll, near the Capitol Building.

It’s as you’re working the kinks out of your quads that you see a tall, blond man slow from a dead sprint to a halt. Steve Rogers puts his hands on his hips, breathing slow, measured breaths, and you can see exactly when he notices you—his gaze sharpens, examining you not with interest, but for a potential threat. You stifle your panic, go cold because numbness is better than fear, until he nods at you briefly and starts to jog again.

As soon as he leaves, you exhale the air that you’ve been holding. The acid taste in your mouth disappears, and you begin to feel safe again. After heading back to your apartment to shower, you drive to the Triskelion to bury yourself in paperwork and mission briefings, hoping that you’ll be able to avoid any broad-shouldered super soldiers that might be in the facility.

You’re carrying evidence down to the labs when Steve Rogers steps on the elevator.

“Ma’am,” he politely inclines his head towards you, then takes a look at your frozen face. A concerned expression steals over his features. “Are you all right?”

“I—,” you choke, unable to look at him, at this man with the honorable eyes and stern mouth of your childhood princes, a symbol of one of your nightmares. The bag of evidence in your hands shakes as your hands tremble. “Yeah.” It comes out as a whisper. Then the elevator dings, and you almost sprint down the hall.

Steve stares after you, perplexed by a response closer to abject fear than nervousness. He looks you up in S.H.I.E.L.D’s database later, having briefly read the name on your badge in the elevator, and the organization’s records are nothing if not thorough. Graduated magna cum laude, worked at a prestigious PR firm in—New York.

He scrolls down farther, has a suspicion that is confirmed, a few pages later, by the hospital records. Guilt stabs him in the stomach. Afterwards he tries to avoid you in the Triskelion (not that it’s hard, with thousands of S.H.I.E.L.D agents between you, but he takes special care to avoid your floor, tries not to trigger you unnecessarily).

You, on the other hand, cope the best you can, losing yourself in work and running (on a different route) and therapy until Dr. Stanton says that your mental scar tissue is—finally—beginning to heal.

The next time you meet, he’s on a mission, and you’re a vision in red.


	2. a mirage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol this is literally 3,000 words someone help me??? this ran away from me???? also the snowden reference is because this takes place roughly around 2013? don't fact check me please

You’re not the first thing Steve notices in the lushly appointed home of the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security—he’s distracted by the stiff collar of his dress shirt cutting into his neck, and the well-heeled, champagne-sipping crowd, and the Congressman himself, who is enthusiastically introducing Steve as a _national hero_ (a title he’s never felt comfortable with, even if he’s stopped protesting every time someone says it). 

He doesn’t want to be here, in a tuxedo that feels more constricting than well-fitting, hobnobbing with government officials whose conversations seem like they revolve solely around politics and private schools. But Natasha is gently pumping those same officials for information so subtly that they won’t even realize that classified details have been coaxed from their lips, and Steve’s famous enough that he doesn’t have to sneak into the gala in order to be her backup. 

He half-listens to the Congressman recount stories about the Howling Commandos, nodding where he should but mostly scanning the room. It’s unlikely that they’ll be compromised here in D.C., at a congressman’s charity benefit of all places, but the sensation of unfamiliar eyes on him has never quite stopped making him—well, not tense, but it doesn’t take much for him to stay alert. 

He sees a brief glimpse of a profile he thinks he recognizes, one that makes him glance to the left at a knot of elegantly-dressed people conversing animatedly about foreign policy. Someone shifts, and it blocks his view. Still, Steve’s mildly curious in the way that only a bored party guest can be, so he angles himself to people-watch, making sure to keep one eye on Nat, who’s chatting with a weak-chinned man he vaguely remembers is the White House Press Secretary. 

Two men leave the group to have a smoke on the patio, and just for a second, Steve sees a flash of a silky red dress. But then the junior senator from New York pulls him away, guiding him towards the hors d’oeuvres while chattering enthusiastically about how much Brooklyn has changed since Steve was encased in the ice. 

***

You are intimately aware of the hand pressed to the small of your back, just above where your dress meets bare skin. It feels like a claim, a brand, and as Will steers you around the gala, you can’t help but think that he’s taking advantage of what you owe him. 

When you’d first run into your ex, you were in Georgetown following up on a lead. A week before, you’d begun gathering info on a spate of robberies in Arlington where the perps had left behind odd, ritualistic tokens. S.H.I.E.L.D. had gotten involved when local law enforcement had come up empty; the sites had been completely wiped clean of evidence, and anyone with that kind of tech (or power, for that matter, in the brave new world you live in) was likely playing a deeper game than just a few cash grabs. 

Luckily, you knew a professor in Georgetown’s anthropology department that specialized in the strange, almost arcane totems the burglars left. You sat with her for an hour that day while she scribbled down all of the possible meanings for each item, leaving with the promise that a further analysis would be faxed to your team within the next few days. 

You weren’t planning on stopping for very long in Georgetown, but your stomach was growling and your head was throbbing from the anti-anxiety meds the doc had you on then—they were a low dose, meant to even you out, mostly, but they came with some inconvenient side effects. Luckily, the headaches tended to fade in a few hours, provided that you ate and drank enough. 

When you pushed open the door to Dean & DeLuca’s, hoping to grab a bottled water and a muffin, you started involuntarily upon seeing Will handing the barista his credit card, holding a coffee order you still knew by heart. You ducked your head, trying to avoid his gaze so that he wouldn’t see you, but when he finished paying, he turned towards the door where were standing. 

Surprise flickered over his face, along with a wealth of other emotions you were at a loss to interpret then—now you could probably recognize them as a keen interest, definitely, and, if you’re flattering yourself, a hint of longing. Then he pushed a lock of curly brown hair out of his eyes and strode over to where you stood. 

“Hey,” he said, as if he was unruffled by your presence, and flashed the charming grin that was the first thing you noticed about him when you’d met in college. “What are you doing here? I didn’t even know you were back in D.C.”

There’s always been something cute and puppy-doggish about that smile when he levels it on you, and you have no doubt that he wields it as effectively on everyone else. Will is many things, but he’s definitely not stupid. He might have gotten the job as Chief of Staff on his mother’s campaign through casual nepotism, but from what you’ve heard, he’s a power broker now, and that means he can charm and schmooze with the best of them. 

Just because you know it’s calculated, however, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work; in fact, it’s so painful a reminder of what’s lingering unresolved between you two that it worked even better than he had probably expected. It was hard to see him and not be reminded that when you left for New York, you broke both his heart and your own. 

“Hi,” you said, manufacturing politeness. You refused to feel weak in front of your ex, even if the weight of your shared past was pressing down on both of you. “I moved back about a year ago, but I haven’t been in the neighborhood much since then. It’s nice to be back, though.” 

You asked after his parents, and he asked after yours, and then you both occupied several minutes with casual inanities, neither of you mentioning the topics that you knew were taboo. Will seemed to grow more and more frustrated with the small talk, opening his mouth as if to say something, then closing it as if he’d thought better of it, until—

“Listen, can you just—can we talk sometime? Not like this.” He motioned in between the two of you. “I mean, will you give me your number so I can take you out to dinner or something, and we can talk, for real?”

You hesitated at the thought of renewing old ties, remembering that the whole point of moving away so abruptly was to leave old baggage behind and start anew. But there was a pleading look in Will’s eyes, a sense of something unresolved, and guilt struck you as you realized that maybe he _hadn’t_ started over. You hadn’t ever given him that resolution. 

You knew that on paper, you seemed like a perfect match. You were ambitious, and you had a core of steel that complimented his ruthlessness. His mother, a well-coiffed senator with presidential aspirations (by whose decisions Washington seems to either flourish or die, depending on her mood) used to treat you with begrudging respect. But when Will had called your best friend asking for your ring size and what kind of diamond cut she thought you would like, princess-cut or round, you began to feel the walls closing in. 

You had had the sense that sharing his life—the endless maneuvering and under-the-table dealing and pageantry—would be suffocating. Oh, Will and his mother paid lip service to your career aspirations, certainly, but you’d understood from the beginning that politics was in their blood, and that you would always play second fiddle. 

Since you had no desire to jockey for political capital of your own, becoming his wife when you were both so young would have consigned you—no matter how successful, how clever, or how polished—to life as an accessory, trotted out at parties to impress everyone with your eloquence. 

It would have been a little death of the soul, and the part of you that you’d always held in reserve (the part of you that still imagined yourself as the heroine of your own story) had rebelled. Within the next few weeks, you had terminated your lease, packed everything you owned, bought a one-way ticket to New York, and never looked back. 

Maybe, you thought that day, Will deserves a few answers. 

“All right.” You took the phone that he handed to you and entered your number, expecting him to call in a few days for a nice lunch in Foggy Bottom, or even a casual round of drinks. In hindsight, you should have known better; Will doesn’t do casual, and he would never pass up the chance to see you in a sexy red dress. 

You didn’t think anything of it when he found your address and sent you flowers—searching for comfort, you’d rented your new place from a mutual friend—until a ticket to the congressman’s black-tie benefit showed up a few days later, along with a scribbled note. _I’ll pick you up at 8._

So here you are, with his hand on your bare back, in deep discussion with a group of your old college friends about Edward Snowden’s release of thousands of classified NSA documents. At least you’re managing to avoid your almost-mother-in-law, who is talking to a few of her colleagues on the other side of the grand ballroom. You can’t even begin to imagine how _that_ conversation might go. 

Will leans down to you and says, “I think it’s time to make the rounds again.” His eyes sparkle, and as much as you hate these types of things, it makes your heart twinge to see how attractive he is in his element. You didn’t come here to rekindle an old flame—there’s too much history between you, and despite what he seems to think, you’re two very different people—but momentarily, you remember why you fell in love with him in the first place.

It takes you at least half an hour to make your way around the ballroom. Will attempts to introduce you, but unwilling to be his armpiece, you make a point of introducing yourself; your sharp intelligence concerning both foreign and domestic affairs (one perk of working for S.H.I.E.L.D.) gains you a fair amount of admirers of your own. 

After another half an hour of impassioned conversation with a woman from the U.N. Security Council, Will leads you over to a huge cluster of people, more of an excited mob than you would have ever expected at a fairly genteel event like this one. You’re not above throwing a few elbows as long as you know what the effort is for, so in a low voice you ask, “Who are we trying to meet, again?”

Will’s voice lowers to an almost gossipy register. “The money raised tonight is going directly to a fund set up for the remaining veterans of World War II. Congressman Brandon invited Captain America because, you know—and he didn’t actually think he would come. But he’s here, and he brought the Black Widow with him.” 

You tense, having not expected to see any of the Avengers here, of all places, at a stuffy political benefit where they probably have nothing in common with any of the guests. 

Quickly, you do a few mental calculations and decide that you’ll (probably) be fine. Since the last time you made a fool of yourself in front of Steve Rogers, your anxiety has gotten better. It’s not gone by any means, and you still wake up screaming, sometimes, but you’re handling it better, and that’s all you can ask for. 

You can do this, you coach yourself internally—and suddenly, without any more time to think, you’re breaking through the throng to where Captain Rogers is standing. 

Steve’s been bored for hours, but now he’s edging into irritated; there are people all around him, constantly trying to engage him in fawning conversations, and they remind him unflatteringly of war bonds salesmen he met during the forties. Everyone at the party has an agenda, even if it’s as relatively harmless as rubbing shoulders with one of the members of the most celebrated team of superheroes in the world. It makes him itch with frustration; he felt like a dancing monkey then, and he’s not sure this is any better. 

He’s considering pushing through the rest of the guests just to get away when a couple finds their way through the throng to stand right in front of him. His brain, previously not paying attention to anyone in particular, starts to short-circuit as he’s blinded by rich red silk. He’s slightly in awe as his gaze takes in how the fabric sheathes luscious curves, then travels up until he recognizes the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who looked at him with nothing short of panic the last time they met. 

His perusal (as brief and as courteous as it is by modern standards) feels improper, so a tinge of red covers his cheekbones as Will puts out his hand and introduces himself. You don’t stare at him in mute panic as you put out your own hand, this time, but you look at him with ready wariness, like one would stare at a tiger if one wasn’t sure whether or not it would spring. 

“(Y/N) (Y/LN),” you introduce yourself as you shake his hand; you notice despite yourself that his large palm, warm and calloused, dwarfs yours. 

“Nice to meet you properly,” Steve offers, and Will shoots you an interested glance, latching on to the implication. You haven’t told him about S.H.I.E.L.D., and you aren’t planning to, so you glance at Steve in mute appeal. 

“We both run on the Mall in the mornings. It’s a pretty small community.” It’s a lame excuse, but at least partly true, and truthfully, you’re shocked that he even remembered seeing you run along the Potomac at dawn, so you add on to the lie with an ease born of instinct.

“To be fair, I’m pretty sure your definition of running and mine are a little different,” you say, lowering your voice confidentially and turning to Will as if trying to tell him a secret. “He passes me at least three times before I can even finish a loop.” 

Steve smiles at you, and you’re momentarily startled by the sheer force of it, its genuineness. It blows Will’s charm out of the water, and you’d have to be blind not to see how handsome he is. 

“You’re not really as slow as all that. If it makes you feel any better, you can blame the super-soldier serum,” he teases, and suddenly the air seems to change, the forced rapport between you becoming real. The tension ebbs out of your shoulders slightly, and Steve’s sharp eyes don’t miss it. 

Imperceptibly, he relaxes, too, and you realize how much your nerves have set him on edge. Likely people aren’t afraid of him very often, and that brief instant of released tension tells you that he doesn’t like it. 

You’d like to mull over what that means, but Will makes some comment about how there's a more picturesque running route near Georgetown and twines his arm possessively around your waist. The movement shatters the moment developing between you and Steve like a bubble popping, and you shake your head briefly as if to adjust, feeling slightly disappointed in a way you don’t want to examine. 

It’s beginning to seem like more and more of a mistake to have let Will take you here as his date; you’ve never had any intention of getting back together with him, have never even considered that he wanted to get back together, but his arm around your waist is both a gesture of ownership and a sign that he sees Steve’s presence as a threat. Which is ridiculous in and of itself—you highly doubt that Captain America is interested in anything beyond getting out of this stifling room.

As the three of you continue to make polite conversation for another minute, you wonder if you’re imagining Steve’s gaze catching on first your dress, then the hand around your waist. Then he’s pulled away in the next minute by some delegate or other, and you’re left alone. 

Later, at home, when you pull off your heels, slip out of your dress, and try to figure out what kind of discouraging text to send your ex-boyfriend— _Thanks, I had a great time, please don’t contact me_ —your mind goes over a single moment from the night, so brief it almost feels like a mirage. 

You replay it over and over, unable to figure out why you’re so fascinated by the instant when tension slipped from both yours and Captain America’s shoulders, the second when you weren’t afraid anymore, where you watched someone who was both a monster and a hero to you become just human.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i posted again, but due to my general unreliability who knows when another chapter will come out!! im invested in this now tho so it will happen eventually... if u like pls leave me a message to feed my giant ego
> 
> p.s. it's 4am here so i'll prob edit for clarity, etc in the morning
> 
> ALSO WE HATE WILL OK THANKS BYE


	3. phantasms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: grisly description of a dead body in the first two paras so if ur not into that stuff!! please skip over. p.s. this team of secret agents is so Soft and I would die for them

Two weeks later, you stand, shivering, in front of a dead body—the second one the cops have found this month—mutilated so gruesomely that even the grizzled cop pulling back the caution tape at the scene has to turn around briefly to cover his dry retching. 

The victim is male, in his early thirties, and all that’s left of his face is a few inches of forehead; the rest has been eaten away by acid. His body is tattooed with symbols, most of which you don’t recognize. A few are familiar: you see an ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail; Eve in the garden of Eden while the serpent rears menacingly in the background, fangs outstretched; and what looks like a water snake, like the kind you would find swimming in shallow, still ponds back in Kansas. All the tattoos are fresh and rendered in exquisite detail, as if they could jump off of his skin. The thought gives you the urge to vomit. 

You want to believe that you’re made of sterner stuff than that, although sheer strength of will is the only thing keeping you from panicking. Your unit is a relatively small one, focused on political espionage, on diving into the seedy underbelly of the one of the world’s greatest nexuses of power, and though you’ve seen plenty of violence—on your last case, a lobbyist suspected of treason shot three police officers and then held a gun to his own wife’s head—it’s never been quite this senseless. 

Your supervising agents have taught you that everything has a logic to it, even violence. If a fire is set in the District Attorney’s office on the evening before a very important corruption case is sent to opening arguments, leaving case files and evidence destroyed, look very closely at the friends, family, and backers of the accused. If a body washes up on the shores of the Potomac, a single, perfectly shaped bullet hole in the middle of its forehead, look for a hit man (and who hired him). But this—a man found surrounded by tablets etched with snakes, clothes still wet, and covered in recently inked, incredibly detailed tattoos—there is no sense to be made of it, and no easy answer for why the body has been left deliberately uncovered, in a dumpster behind one of the Senate office buildings. 

Maybe senseless isn’t the right word to use, you think. This murder reeks of magic ritual, and now that gods who can command lightning and open up portals to other worlds exist, you have a feeling that this murder makes a terrible kind of sense to individuals who are far above your cosmic pay grade. The thought creates a fresh wave of nausea. Any killing that might bear the influence of a god means big, big trouble. 

You hear your name being called and turn around to see your boss slipping under the yellow tape. 

“Tell me what we’ve got,” Alicia Ramirez says, her steel gray suit jacket whipping in the freezing wind. You’re neither a detective nor a crime scene tech, but you give her your best summary of what they’ve told you. 

“Everything is the same as it was at the first scene, down to the tattoos, which are placed in identical spots on the body to the last victim. There’s not even a shred of biological evidence, and no physical evidence except for the body—the place was wiped clean,” you tell her, your voice displaying some of the frustration that doesn’t show on your face.  
“And the tokens?” she asks. 

“Same as the tablets we took in as evidence during the robberies, down to the clay that was used to make them. I took them over to Dr. Perez just to be sure, but she could only tell us what she’d told us before.” You sigh and rub your temples briefly. “The messages on them are written in Norse runes, but they don’t correspond to any language we know or understand. The snakes are depictions of gods from every different polytheistic religion under the sun.”

“At least the complete lack of evidence means that they’re making it easy for our cleanup crew.” She grimaces, clearly unhappy that no one on the team has been able to find a single lead. S.H.I.E.L.D. was happy to have a team of lower-level agents do the legwork at first, when it was just a set of robberies in Arlington National Cemetery and a burglary in the Chief of Staff’s home, but now that the case is shaping up to be something inexplicable by human motives, higher clearance agents will be taking over, soon. And Alicia, like any good intelligence officer, hates being left out of the loop. 

She stops to brief the detectives and the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents that will remain on the scene until it’s cleaned, then motions to the car. You get in, feeling more powerless than you have in a while.

The Triskelion is humming with activity when you get back, even though it’s a Saturday morning and the team has spent all night combing through data. Evan yawns as he greets you, huge cup of coffee and donut in hand, his half-forgotten headphones still blaring Broadway musical numbers as they poke haphazardly out of the collar of his thick woolen sweater. Sarah spins around on her swivel chair to wave, a major case of bedhead ruffling her long pink hair; you suspect that she fell asleep at her desk at some point while you were gone. Jake is at a whiteboard crunching geographical numbers—sometimes your resident data guy works best the old fashioned way—but he, too, looks utterly exhausted. Honestly, you’re pretty sure you don’t look much better. 

All of you look pleadingly at Alicia, begging silently for a break. She shrugs helplessly. “I just got a request for us to brief a team of agents on floor twenty.” You all open your mouths to speak at the same time, but she holds up a hand and you pause. “I don’t know if that means we’re getting reassigned. I just know that it means we’re going to have to have to come up with an airtight presentation for the briefing at 1.”

You stifle your protests and pour yourself an extra-large mug of tar-black coffee. 

** 

Sarah pokes you with her bony elbow and makes an incredibly unsubtle pointing motion at one side of the briefing room as you walk in. At this point, you think, you shouldn’t be shocked to see Captain Rogers in the boardroom filled with Level 7 and Level 8 agents in suits—he seems to be everywhere these days. You remember the bags that must be under your eyes and think about how unfair it is that the afternoon light shining through the windows only makes him look better; backlit by the sun’s rays, the sharp angles of his perfectly symmetrical face are softened, and it makes him look less stern, somehow. 

You pull your gaze from him to focus intently on Alicia, who introduces herself to the agents ringed around the table and begins to give a summary of the team’s findings. Evan presents a profile of the unsub that he’s constructed, pushing up his horn-rimmed glasses when they begin to fall down his nose. His profile is drawn from a few years of brilliant research he started years before New York, from case studies of odd individuals that S.H.I.E.L.D. comes across—like the accidentally or purposefully enhanced, the unusually intelligent, and the inexplicably sentient. 

Next, Sarah runs down the list of potential suspects, narrowed by the considerable amount of time she spends on the streets, interviewing her informants. A former beat cop, she has a constant ear to the ground—which means that no one on your team can ever hope to hide a secret from her, innocent or not. Last year she wormed the name of everyone’s Secret Santa giftee out of them in about five minutes flat. 

Jake triangulates the unsub’s likely geographic location to within twenty square miles and explains some key scientific findings from forensics. Like the fact that the scene had been scrubbed of all genetic evidence, and that the only thing found around the bodies at the microscopic level was plant matter. Specifically, crushed heather and yarrow, which he notes is significant in a way you haven’t yet figured out. 

It’s up to you to compile all of this data into a comprehensible theory of the crime. As the team’s researcher (ever since New York, you’ve been an omnivorous consumer of all kinds of knowledge, maybe in an effort to never be surprised by the expansion of your world again), you’re responsible for the why of everything, and it’s made you realize just how much you don’t know. You can explain the likely ritual component of the murders, and what the symbols around the body might mean, but not the ritual itself or why it’s been done. The gaps are frustrating. 

Everyone on your team looks at information through a different lens—it’s what makes you work so well together. Evan is clinical and Jake is meticulous, although they’re both all about drawing out meaning through detail. Sarah’s emotional intelligence is off the charts, and she sees the networks of human relationships more accurately than anyone you’ve ever met. Alicia is the best at seeing the big picture implications of an event. You’re characterized by your intuition (almost preternatural, Jake calls it) because you like to accumulate massive amounts of data in order to fit it together in ingenious flashes of insight—like lifting the pins of a lock one-by-one and then suddenly being able to turn the key. Working together, all of you have the quickest case-by-case solution rate in your division, which is why it’s so troubling that all of your collective knowledge has so many blank spots. 

The agents around the table seem to think the same thing. You see tapping fingers and unsettled murmurs, intent looks and pens scratching notes as they try to glean new clues from the information you’ve gathered. Steve Rogers is deep in thought, staring down at the pictures of the two bodies, and you notice that his focused expression creates tiny wrinkles in between his brows. 

“Is there any reason you think we shouldn’t turn this over to a S.H.I.E.L.D. team of Specialists who is better equipped to flush the perpetrator out of hiding by force? Two men are dead, Agent Ramirez, and your team has nothing to show for it.” A woman in her late sixties, with a neatly-pressed pantsuit and iron-gray hair pulled up in a severe bun, says what the rest are thinking. 

You see Alicia steel herself for battle and know that your team is seconds away from losing this case. 

“With all due respect, Agent Jensen, sending a team of trained killers to find the unsub would be a mistake. We’re suffering from a lack of information, not a lack of force. Your best chance of obtaining that information is to use a team of trained analysts, not to shoot first and ask questions later,” she says. 

“You cannot ignore the fact that this case seems to be above your pay grade, Alicia. While your team has gone through the mandatory S.H.I.E.L.D. combat course, none of you have the specialized skills needed to safely apprehend a murderer who clearly has some kind of power,” another agent, a tall, lean man with cold eyes, returns, his voice coloring with disgust as he spits out the last word.

“I assure you, Ivanov, that none of us are planning on going charging into battle,” she retorts. “I am fully willing to cede control to a qualified team once we’ve found the killer.” 

Taking a deep breath, she continues. 

“All of the agents on this team have demonstrated in their reports that they have the skills to solve this case, and no one you bring in is going to do it better. We’ve cleared cold cases that have been sitting for decades in days. We just need more time,” she says, stubbornness evident in every line of her face and body. 

The room erupts into conversation. Agent Jensen, as the ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, has the final say, but the room grows louder and more cacophonous by the second as the other agents debate. 

A calm, collected voice cuts through the chatter like a knife through butter. “I’m willing to temporarily join the team in order to solve this problem,” Captain Rogers says, and the room goes silent. 

You trade dumbfounded glances with Evan. Ivanov has a thunderous look on his thin face. Jensen is visibly flustered. “Excuse me, Captain?” she says. 

“You need someone who is a skilled fighter and has experience with things that aren’t from this neck of the woods. I happen to be both of those things.” His face brooks no argument, and you wonder what the hell he’s thinking. Doesn’t he have more important things to do? 

_Why would he waste his time on this, unless—oh._ Suddenly pieces of the puzzle slot into place. You sneak a glance at him, the firm set of his jaw, and realize that in minutes, he’s arrived at a conclusion that, without the necessary frame of reference, has taken you until just now to figure out. 

“Rogers, we can’t spare you for this,” Jensen says. “You have much higher-priority missions than going after something this local.” 

You let out a deep, calming breath, working up your courage to speak up. “You’re going to have to, Ma’am. These victims—who do they look like to you?”

She studies the crime scene photos. The first body is male, in his forties, short, with dark hair and a goatee. The second is also male, strong and muscular and very, very tall, with long blond hair. You see the moment it clicks. “Tony Stark? And…Thor?”

“This is bigger than local,” you say. “Way bigger.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol this accidentally turned into a police procedural but reader and steve get to solve CRIME together 
> 
> we will take a sharp right back into romance in the next chapter sorry i got vvv excited

**Author's Note:**

> i'm planning another part to this, which will be updated when i have another instinct to write frantically for a few hours, but since i'm a full time student, that might be a while! please let me know if you like it!!


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